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January 26, 2018

I wanted to give a quick update on my progress with LOTRO Basics. Note: After writing this, it exploded much more than I thought. This is a more major than quick update. I would love any feedback on any of the stuff in here!

I have a few things planned for early 2018 with LOTRO Basics including an expansion of this website and, well, hopefully more videos. For my full plans for 2018 please check out this video if you haven't seen it:

I have made a few changes recently, made some progress on upcoming episodes, and even updated some old episodes!

More recently, I updated the thumbnails for all the past episodes. I feel like the new style is a lot more clear and legible. I have also been able to change the background image to more match the spec/class with this change. If you are interested in these videos, here are the episodes I have already done, here is a list:

You may also notice that in this thumbnail, it just says build instead of leveling build on the bottom. This is intentional and part of the upcoming “changes”. This is due to the Rune Keeper blue line being a healing spec, it works for leveling just as it would at the cap. So, this is the first episode that doesn’t have a primary focus on leveling (while it still keeps level in mind, though!).

In addition to the episode above, here are some upcoming episodes I can give a preview on:

ChampionYellowLine

Rune Keeper Red & Blue Lines

Warden Yellow Line + Special Episode

Captain Red Line

I do have some more upcoming, but they may be in the more distant future.

For these new episodes, there is more good news with upcomingchanges…

I am using better recording software.

Audio/Microphone - I am using Windows voice recorder which gives the cleanest recordings out of anything I have tried.

Video - I am using NVIDIA Share/Shadowplay or whatever it is called now. This has the least amount of lag and highest quality compared to other options.

Some in-video editing changes include a brief title clip at the beginning and including more gameplay at the beginning and end if needed to fill talk time where I am doing nothing directly related to showing the build.

That is all for the recent changes and this update. At the end here, I thought it may be neat to share some statistics with these videos. This also answers why they can’t come out more often:

Recording time - 25-45 minutes

Editing time - 2-4 hours (120-240 minutes)

Thumbnail time - 15-60 minutes

Setup time - 20-60 minutes

YouTube upload/publish time - 15-30 minutes

Rendering time - 1-2 hours (60-120 minutes), passive

Overall it takes a lot of time per episode, on average about 4 hours of active work, and additional time to render and finalize the episodes. So, it takes a while to get each episode done and that is why I don’t have these quite as often as I’d like.

My goal is to have episodes weekly, but that is a challenge and will likely have to be every other week. We will see from here how it goes in the future, though!

July 31, 2017

Hello everyone! It has been a while since I have posted anything and I have also done a bit of updating since my last post. The rest of this will be on information about LOTRO Basics, upcoming changes, and what is going on with the site!

Major Things:

I will not be posting videos here anymore. In the introduction video and post I noted that I was not sure if this website would work to help out with the videos and it appears it is not. So from now on, there will not be any videos posted here. I will slowly, but eventually, removed all the old video posts. Video information, databases, and pages will stay.

Anything posted here will be meta related for LOTRO Basics, text/infographic guides, and other stuff that isn't videos but fits.

So with that info... I do plan* on eventually getting to doing some more text guides! I will list them at the bottom of the post!

Hosted Content: I am not entirely sure how this works with Blogger and the tools available on this website, but I am also willing to and looking to host quality text/visual/audio (non-video, to start) content that fits LOTRO Basics. I think this could be mutually beneficial to anybody looking to publish something and get publicity/promotion as well as for this blog to receive the same things. If your content is of high quality, helps the blog, and you continuously contribute, I am willing forward some payments to you made from advertisements and donations. This is something I just thought about while writing this post, but if you may be interested, please contact me!

* plan means I want to do them but cannot guarantee due to time constraints, school, work, managing YT, playing games like LOTRO, etc.

Minor Things:

There are a few things that I will be slowly changing on the website to reformat the series from "LOTRO: Basics" to "LOTRO Basics". You may have noticed me using the latter form in this post, even.

In addition to that, I will be touching up elsewhere of the website to both give it a more Mordor-y feel, and just update banners/images/theme/format/etc.

Pages, including the about and video-related ones, will eventually be updated with more up-to-date information.

Closing:

Well, that is it for this update. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

I also do an a planned post coming up on the layout of level sections in LOTRO, but more about the way I would do leveling guides since those have been frequently requested.

July 3, 2017

Description & Video

This episode of LOTRO: Basics returns to the leveling build subseries. This one is much like the previous two going with in depth explanation of my choices with a lot of class-guide related information. This one continues with the Warden builds, on the blue line. The blue line is a good choice for leveling for tanking or better solo survivability. Here is the video:

June 26, 2017

There is updating being done to this guide for Mordor! I will have a full update and log soon after I get a basis for Mordor gold making. A lot of the information below is still valid. Invalid parts would be certain methods related to the old level cap.

This is the first guide posted on the LOTRO: Basics website that is a text guide! I may look into integrating it into video parts later on, but for now it is text (and image) based. Anyway, this guide is on how to make gold in the Lord of the Rings Online. Here is the layout of this guide:

Why Do You Need Gold?

Terminology, Glossary, and Description of Gold Making

Introductory Methods to Making Gold for All Players

Quick Tips on Making Gold!

How I Make Gold (and What I Spend It On)

Closing

(please leave any feedback on this guide and format if you have any - I will try to make it as clean as I can with the tools Blogger provides as well as the little HTML I know)

June 15, 2017

Questions that have commonly come up lately on my level build guide videos have gone something like this:

Why are you not doing level cap/end game builds? Will this work for level cap?
Another related concern I see is actually related to the builds not being for level cap characters. For example:

[This] trait is bad. You can spent your points on [this trait] instead of [picked trait] and be better for your group.

While those statements may be true for level cap characters with a different focus than solo leveling, the whole points of these build videos are to serve as class guides for people leveling those characters and perhaps still not fully experienced with how that class works.

So, the point of this is to explain a bit why these guides are this way, but more so on why am I not doing ones for the level cap right now.

June 12, 2017

Description & Video

The first classic-style LOTRO: Basics guide! This one is on Collections and goes over each part of your collections - mounts, (cosmetic) pets, emotes, and stable masters (map). It starts with a broad overview of how collections works, then goes into detail on each individual part. So, here are some useful timestamps:

1:50 - Pets

3:52 - Mounts

5:38 - Emotes

8:03 - Stable-masters

End of Video - Special Tip!

Since you are on the LOTRO: Basics website, I will go ahead and just share spoil what the special tip is... It is on how to do custom emotes in LOTRO. Unfortunately, it won't be a custom animated emote, rather you can just customize the 'chat' part of your emote. This can be very useful for RP, but also good for general fun/messing around. (please use responsibly). Anyway, here is the video:

June 5, 2017

Description & Video

Similar to the last LOTRO: Basics guide, this is another leveling build. This one swaps classes to the Rune Keeper and goes of a yellow line build. This guide follows the format of the last one going into detail of my choices and giving various tips throughout.

The yellow line, or lightning spec, is great for solo and leveling RKs. Although total damage output may not be as high as red/fire over time, it has high burst damage, is mobile, and can kill quicker while leveling. All that combines to a great leveling spec that I also find to be pretty fun! So, here is the video guide:

May 29, 2017

Description & Video

The first (real) episode of LOTRO: Basics goes over a leveling build for the Warden. This episode goes over the red line and again focuses on leveling aspects. This is a more detailed guide for builds going on about 25 minutes long. I plan to have a much shorter version quickly going over all three lines without all the explanations of why I choose what. These should be more useful in learning the class and spec, though. Here is the video:

May 20, 2017

There will be a lot of this information used in a separate about page. A lot of this covers general and broad information on the series, and primarily focuses on the return of the series and why this website even exists. - Mainly an introduction post

This blog is a website for my series LOTRO: Basics "A Lord of the Rings Online Guide". This website will focus around improved organization, communication, and hopefully an enhanced viewing experience. In this post, I will be going over the following:

Attribution

I own all media (including but not limited to videos, images, and audio) used in this unless otherwise stated/noted. Most videos and related can be found on my YouTube channel. Find more about this blog in the about tab above or this link. Questions, comments, feedback, et cetera? Message me on the other platforms linked around this blog, comment on this blog, comment on my YouTube channel, or reach me any other way.